“And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light” (Romans13:11-12).

It’s getting very dark in the world, isn't it? Even a cursory glance at the daily news headlines paints a dire portrait of a world crashing headlong into a churning chasm of chaos.

Syria has been emptied of nearly half of its population within a few month's time. Christians in the hundreds of thousands—men, women and children in nearly every country in the Middle East, along with many of those in the Far Eastern countries such as India and Pakistan are being hunted down and slaughtered daily. And in truth, Christians are not faring much better on the African continent either.

The tiny nation of Israel sits squarely within the cross hairs of every country in the entire Middle East region. And now, Ursa Major (the mighty Russian Bear) has lumbered into Syria armed to the teeth. Russia appears to be building his strength and biding his time—just waiting for the time when the “hook in his jaw” will be pulled, reeling him in and his allies, Iran and Turkey among others, into their prophesied destiny with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob there on the mountains of Israel (see Ezekiel chapters 38-39).

In the Far East, the sleeping giant of the Orient, China, is awakening and flexing its muscles. China looks to be poised to bring down the highly unstable American economy, and with it the rest of the world’s as well.

North Korea, China’s little proxy, is once again saber rattling. Yet regardless of how ludicrous they may come across to the rest of us, the world would be fools to ignore them or their threats.

Europe is quite literally under siege by an ever expanding throng of Muslim invaders masquerading as Syrian refugees. As the world looks on in horror, all of Europe is beginning to fold like a wet house of cards.

Meanwhile, down under in Australia, the populace there just (metaphorically) threw overboard their conservative Prime Minister in exchange for a more politically correct liberal (read socialist) one.

And America? What of America, the colossus of the world? Well, our entireculture -- indeed the very moralfabric of our country, is coming unraveled at such a stunningly rapid rate that our once morally strong and beloved America now resembles a lovely tapestry that has decayed into a desiccated, putrid, pile of rotted fabric; one that is splitting apart from the mold and decay of depravity, violence, greed, avarice, gross sexual perversion and rampant immorality.

Lawlessness and depravity abound from the very top levels of government, business, education, and entertainment right down to the common man on the street. Honesty, integrity, a sound work ethic, civility and compassion have become, as the old saying goes, “Scarcer than hen’s teeth.”

America has premeditatedly butchered nearly 60,000,000 pre-born and preterm babies—tearing them limb from limb; ripping them from their mothers’ bodies, or burning them alive from the inside by caustic saline solution that is pumped into their amniotic sacks.

Still others are torn from what should be the safety of their mothers’ wombs, dumped carelessly onto cold steel tables while their fragile, tiny bodies struggle to live. Lying alone, their tiny hearts attempt to beat, and tiny underdeveloped lungs struggle to breathe.

As they lie there gasping their dying breaths, they are literally savaged and cut apart by monsters in human skin whose very humanity along with their consciences are seared and cauterized by unrepentant sin.

The majority of the ones who do these things are reprobates who have no remorse and absolutely no sense of guilt. They have no heart or love for anything other than the blood money that they gleefully pocket with their bloodstained and gore-soaked hands!

All of these precious, tiny little babies are simply modern day bloodofferings slain on cold steel altars instead of rough stone ones—altars of convenience, avarice and greed.

And, as a final spit in the eye of God, our gutless and soulless legislature has voted down (against the majority of the American people’s wishes, I might add) a bill to at least mitigate the slaughter of what they term “pain sensitive” preterm babies—although even this bill fell woefully short of protecting all pre-born babies from conception onward, as it should be.

Just as surely as the babies and children of the ancient pagans were sacrificed to devils, so this modern day Holocaust is nothing less than blood sacrifices made to those same demonic entities of old. Yes, Molech, still smiles as the blood of millions of babies pours down the drains of America and saturates the very soil upon which we walk!

Our society has descended into a violent, hate-filled, narcissistic and hedonistic cesspool. The love of many has grown cold, just as Jesus said it would in the latter days; and all the while, liberty, justice, and mercy lie dying in the streets of AmericaSadly, our once great American Republic is being transformed from liberty to tyranny so quickly that those of us living here can barely snatch a breath from the blow of one atrocity before another one hits us in our collective solar plexus. Our American culture is quite literally drowning from “transformation” into utter debauchery.

Yes. It is dark alright and getting darker. There are no safe havens left; no places of sanctuary to which one can run. The truth is, outside of Jesus Christ (who is the Ark of Safety), there never were any safe harbors—only the illusion of them.And now, even the illusion of stability in the world is disintegrating. The mask of civility is slipping, and the face that has been hiding behind that mask is coming more clearly into focus for those with spiritual eyes to see it.

The facade that hides the true identity of the deceiving “angel of light” who rules this world is cracking, and those of us who know him in his true identity can see very clearly the jeering face of that fallen angel of darkness that hides behind the shining mask.

It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that indwells each believer that we are able to see and discern the seething hatred that lies behind the deceptive facade of those who are his minions - those whose rallying cry now is “peace and security!”The movers and shakers of the New World Order, that is even now being birthed, are those whose voices are crying aloud, “Look to us! Follow our lead; accept our plans.”

The global elite (with Satan behind them playing their strings like marionettes) cry more loudly day by day, “Trust us!”

They smile and promise the world that one is coming whose extraordinary ability and spiritual enlightenment will enable him to pilot “spaceship earth” safely through the chaotic time of change and transformation that lies just over the horizon! And all the while, behind their soothing silken voice, lurks the sussurant hiss of the adder.Oh yes, Church, the night indeed grows darker. The world is hurtling headlong into the coming Time of Jacob’s Trouble. This coming time of darkness and judgment will be the diametrical opposite of what all of the globalists and new world order proponents are saying is coming.

According to the ruling elite, the world is on the cusp of a time of great change; a transformation, a coming paradigmshift when mankind will make a spiritual evolutionary leap from the old order of the ages into a new age – a “novus ordo seclorum.”

An age where bigotry, narrowness and hatred (meaning Christianity, Israel, and the Bible) with their intolerance of other religions and ideas will be finally dealt with so mankind will finally be able to evolve from mere homo sapiens into homo noeticus – a more aware and spiritually enlightened, more highly conscious mankind, will be birthed.

The time is ripe they say for mankind to take that last giant evolutionary Gestalt leap into a more spiritually advanced uber humanity.

When this spiritual evolutionary leap occurs (according to them), Man will finally become illuminated with higher spiritual enlightenment. Humanity will at last finally become the gods that man has always had within himself the potential to be.If this sales pitch sounds familiar to you, it should. We first heard of this desire to become enlightened (to become like “gods”) from the serpent in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:1-7).

It is the selfsame lie that Satan has used to deceive mankind for millennia. It is the same lie that author Warren B. Smith recounts in his autobiographical book recounting his escape from the New Age Movement titled, The Light That Was Dark: From New Age to Amazing Grace.

This present world is growing darker by the hour, exactly as the Bible said it would be in the “latter days.” So, with this depressing and quite frankly scary descent into deception and spiritual madness speeding at us like a runaway train without brakes, what are we as believers to do?

Knowing that the night (of coming judgment) is at hand, how do we live in these times that are the precursor to the coming time of reckoning for the world?

Let me answer that by first stating what we as Christians should not do—must not do. We must not stick our collective heads in the proverbial sand pile and pretend that all is humming along just as fine as frog hair—that nothing bad is really happening – or if something bad is happening, then it won’t happen to us; it won't affect me or mine.

Have you ever heard the term cognitive dissonance? Cognitive dissonance is defined by Wikipedia as: “the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas or values at the same time, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas or values.”

In other words, people can see and know, on an intellectual level, that things are falling apart, but they continue to behave, act and function as if everything is still normal. Those who do this are displaying cognitive dissonance. They simply cannot accept or deal with anything that upsets theirview of normal. And truthfully, doesn't this describe most people both in and out of the church?

Secondly, just as we ought not to pretend that things are normal when they clearly are not, neither are we Christians to cower in fear, paralyzed to the point of immobility.

We must never throw up our hands in defeat thinking that there is no hope and therefore no use in even trying to do anything for the Lord because—well, the Tribulation is coming no matter what so—“What will be will be.”

Nor should we fall apart and refuse to “earnestly contend for the faith” out of fear of punishment or reprisal. After all, as the apostle Paul reminds us: “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).

This world is not our permanent address anyway. As Jesus reiterates, we are to “fear not.”

Remember the story of Gideon? God used Gideon ( a poor man, a thresher of wheat) and only 300 men to defeat the entire Midianite army. Why, God once even used a lowly donkey to accomplish His purposes. God is never without His witnesses in any age.

Then, what should we be doing in such a time as this? What we should be doing in these darkening days is this: First, we must run back into the Word of God. We must fill our hearts and minds with it - feed on it as the living bread that it is to us. We must learn to hide it in our hearts.

We must also develop the desire to spend more time in prayer. We need to learn how to intercede on our faces before Almighty God in genuine intercessory prayer— not just our usual “popcorn prayers” where we just ask God to bless who or whatever happens to pop into our heads. No, we must learn the value of the passion of prayer.

We must ask the Lord to place within us His love for the lost. We must learn to love the lost, even the most vile and wicked of them, as God loves them; for none of us is worthy of salvation. It is the heart of God who “is love” that motivates us to love others -- to share with all the gospel of the grace of God that leads to salvation.“He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love” (1John 4:8).

Finally, we must learn to take the Word of God and wield it as the Sword of the Spirit which it is hiding it in our hearts—not just as a defensive weapon, but as an offensive one as well. So that, come what may, we will be able to “quench the fiery darts” of the enemy of our souls, and be able to at all times “sanctify the Lord God in [our] hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh [us] a reason of the hope that is in [us] with meekness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15).

The good news—the great news—is that for those who belong to the Lord; those of us who have come to Jesus and trusted Him as our Savior, the excellent news for us is that we won’t be here to face the time of judgment that is coming for those who are left upon the earth after we are gone.

When one is saved, he or she becomes a part of what Jesus Himself calls “His Body” or “His Bride.” When we are saved, we are a part of His “Bride,” and He has promised to keep His Bride from both the time and place of the coming judgment that He is about to unleash upon a debauched and sin-polluted world (see Revelation 3:10).

So, even though the Church will be taken out, raptured (caught up) before the coming time of judgment known as the Tribulation, nevertheless we still have to live in this wicked world until that time of catching away comes.

Until then, we remain in a world that grows darker and more evil by the day, but into which we are called to be the light that shines in the darkness pointing men, women, boys, and girls everywhere to Jesus, who is the Light of the World.

Jesus promised that we as His Bride would escape His wrath, and judgment, but He NEVER promised us that we as His followers would escape persecution from the world and from Satan, who is its ruler.

No. Christ told His Church to expect persecution from the world, but He also reminded us to “be of good cheer” because, come what may, He has overcome the world – not that He will overcome it, but that He already has overcome it (John 16:33).

There are billions of people who are lost; so many who need to hear the gospel. There are millions all over the world who are suffering untold horrors and great persecution. People who need to hear that Jesus loves them, that He died to free them from their sins and from an eternity in Hell.

They need to hear that Christ knows and understands their suffering, because He suffered God's judgment of sin on behalf of all mankind, that He has not forgotten them! They need to hear that He knows each one of them by name and that He died to save them.

There are those in every country on earth who have been blinded by deception; those who have been raised on violence who have been fed on the rancid milk of hatred from the cradle; those whose souls have been blighted by a violence that is fueled by bitter hatred and despair; those who need to hear the truth that Jesus loves them and that only He can break the chains of sin that condemns them.They need to hear that only He can heal their hearts of the hatred that has enchained and imprisoned them in a life of anger, hatred, bitterness and despair that is poisoning their souls and sending them straight into an eternal Hell.These people need to know that Christ Jesus died for them, and that He can forgive them and can setthemfree, exchanging their hardened hearts of stone for a new and loving heart!

There are those who have been ensnared and deceived by the god of this world into thinking that they “have it all” and that the ride will never end. These people need to know that unless they cry out to Jesus for salvation, that an eternity in Hell awaits them; that all of their beauty, all of their wealth, and all of their power will vanish in an instant when they draw their final breath.

They need to know that one day they will stand, steeped in their sin, before a holy and righteous God, before whom they will all one day bow.

They, too, need to know that Jesus died to give them, not just life, but abundant life that will last into all eternity if they will but come to Him by faith.

These are they who make up those “fields that are white unto harvest” (see John 4:35-38) to whom Jesus expects us to go, to love, and to reach out to before we leave this world for our home in Glory.

We know that not everyone will heed God’s call to salvation. Sadly, there will be many who will refuse this so great salvation that is freely offered to “whosoever will” that will come.

All we are called to do is to point the lost to Jesus. What they choose to do with Him is up to them. But if we are faithful to what God has called us to do, then we will have shown to them the Savior who loves them and who died to set them free. That is our calling and our mandate; to give the gospel to whoever will listen; to bring men to Jesus.

There are so many who are lost. Let us spend the time that we have left here, however long or short that time may be, reflecting Jesus, the Light of the World, to a those who are headed straight to the darkness of judgment and to Hell. We won’t reach them all, but we will reach some.

It is getting very dark, BUT the darker the night, the brighter our lights will shine. Bride of Christ, until we are called Home, let’s shine.